French
were driven out and fell back on Arras. France was in sore straits.
Mainz capitulated on July 23, and the army of the Moselle retreated
behind the Saar. On the Spanish frontier Roussillon was invaded. In the
Alps the republican army was driven back near Saorgio, and its best
troops were sent off to quell insurrection in the cities of the south;
for the country was torn by civil discord. The Girondins were overthrown
in June, and the party called the Mountain gained absolute power.
Bordeaux was a centre of resistance; Marseilles, Lyons, and Toulon were
in revolt, and were supported by the towns of the Jura and Provence. An
insurrection which began in the Vendean district of Anjou grew to a
formidable height. The army of La Vendee, of 40,000 men, defeated the
republican generals, captured Saumur, and threatened Nantes. Between
Basle and the sea the allies were 280,000 strong; an advance on Paris in
two directions, from the Belgian border by Soissons and from Mainz by
Reims, would almost certainly have ended the war. After the capture of
Caesar's camp the way to Paris lay open to Coburg; there was no French
force strong enough to arrest the march of the allies.[244]

[Sidenote: _DISCORDANT AIMS OF THE ALLIES._]

The coalition was paralysed by discord and by the insistence of its
members on the pursuit of different objects. The English ministers made
the security of the Netherlands as an Austrian province a prime
consideration, and to satisfy them the emperor promised to give up the
exchange of the Netherlands for Bavaria. He was to be indemnified by the
acquisition of Alsace and Lorraine, which were to be conquered by the
help of Prussia.[245] Frederick William, however, would not help to
conquer territory for Austria, nor assist in the dismemberment of
France, unless the emperor assented to the treaty for the partition of
Poland secretly arranged between him and Catherine of Russia, and signed
on January 23. Baron Thugut, the Austrian minister, who was violently
hostile toward Prussia, would not assent to a treaty which aggrandised
that power and did not give his master a share in the spoil. While,
then, France, distressed by invasion, revolt, and scarcity, seemed an
easy prey, Brunswick remained on the Rhine, and refused to co-operate
with Austria in Alsace, and Coburg was intent on gaining frontier towns.
The English government was anxious to secure its own share in the
conquests from France, and, on August 10,